Beginnings
by idioticonion
Summary: Alternative Universe - what if, back in 1998, Shannon had convinced Barney that she wanted him back after the Greg incident? Story takes place around season 3 and reference canonical events.
1. Chapter 1

**Beginnings**

_Scotch is just so much better with soda_, he thinks, as he brings the tumbler to his lips.

…just like he is so much better with Shannon.

…just like he _used_ to be so much better with Shannon, past tense.

But it's not like he doesn't still love her, he tells himself. It's not like he could ever abandon Tyler, and Tyler will always be a piece of him, a piece of her. He loves his son.

It's just…

He has this friend at work, at the NRDC, called Marshall, who would hate him for even thinking this stuff. And in fact, he feels a pang of guilt when he thinks about Eriksen. Marshall should be here right now, in the bar below his apartment, drinking and kicking back and not working all hours on this damn Oil Import Bill. Altrucell (the evil corporation of evil) have been throwing their weight around again, and he knows he should be helping Marshall, pushing the long hours together like they always do… saving the world, back to back.

But tonight…

He looks down at his hand, at the band of gold nestling so comfortably around his finger. He fiddles with the ring, turning it around and around before slowly, carefully, sliding it up, towards his knuckle.

His skin is white in the space where the ring should be. He's not taken the damn thing off in ten years. Not even to shower. He feels like a tool for moving it, even now.

But as he pulls his wedding ring over his fingernail something eases inside him. Some hurt, some tension, some god damn huge black cloud that's been hanging over him slowly dissipates.

"Barney, right?"

He starts, the ring falling on to the bar and rolling a few inches before he slams it down with his hand.

There's a woman, the one who spoke, sitting herself down on the stool next to him.

He smiles, kind-of awkwardly. "Yeah… hi." For a moment he stutters and blinks furiously, then he manages to get himself under control. "You're… Robin, right?" He half-grins. "Lily Aldrin's friend?" He knows who she is. He's seen her here before with Marshall's wife. She's that ballsy news reporter - the one who reported that terrorist hold up - the one that won that award.

And she's gorgeous.

Why in the hell is she talking to him?

"Sure am! Catch you at a bad time?" She answers with a smirk.

He shrugs. "Hey, it's Friday night. It's the weekend. Couldn't be a better time…" He's babbling, he knows that he is.

She, Robin, she nods towards the bar, where his finger is still pressing the ring against the wooden surface, hard enough to make a dent. "You gonna put that back on?"

The question is far, far harder to answer than she knows.

Her smile flickers."Hey, that wasn't supposed to be a poser…" She sounds uncertain so he smiles sadly and shrugs, shaking his head.

"No. No, I don't think I am." He answers her. "Gonna put it back on, I mean."

He waves his hand vaguely over the ring once, twice, then on the third pass it vanishes. It's a stupid magic trick, the kind he uses on Tyler when he's having a nine-year-old's sulk. But she gasps and laughs delightedly.

"Hey, where did it go?"

He grins, reaching over, across her, behind her ear, his fingers just brushing her soft, chestnut hair. "It was here all along," he says, the ring now clearly visible in the palm of his hand before he pockets it. His finger still feels weirdly naked without it.

"I take it that things aren't going too well with Shannon?" She asks him.

Again, he shrugs. _Not going too well_ is the understatement of the century. He knows that Shannon's cheated on him more times than he can count, but this time it hurt. God, it hurt more than he can even-

"Hey…" Robin says. "Hey…" She places one hand, lightly, on his back. He can feel the heat of it even through his suit jacket. The stupid jacket... he wore it for the meeting at work, where he should be right now. The meeting at which Marshall is now covering for him…

But life is what it is and her touch feels so much better than it should. As unfaithful as Shannon is/was, he never has been. He's not sure he even knows how to flirt, it's been so long. "Look, let me buy you a drink," he says eventually. He's got nothing left to lose. "Champagne…" He nods to Carl.

"What are we celebrating?" Robin asks him, her blue eyes dancing with humour.

He considers the possible answers: The end of an era? To finally showing his wife that he had the balls to do this?

To being a divorcee as soon as the paperwork goes through?

"New beginnings," he says, as Carl pours two glasses, the bubbles flowing over the tops of the glasses, causing Robin to raise an eyebrow and smirk. _Jesus, she's really, really gorgeous._

"New beginnings," she repeats, clinking her glass against his.


	2. Middles

**Middles**

She invites him back to her place for "coffee".

Coffee? What does that mean?

Does that mean the same thing that it used to? Or have the code-words changed? Thing is, he doesn't have the language. Doesn't speak "single". He hasn't been single since he was twenty-three.

And even when Barney was single he was terrible at this.

But Robin's funny and easy to talk to and they fall into a kind of drunken, champagne-fuelled rhythm. She's not like any woman he's ever known and he comes to the conclusion, admittedly a half-baked conclusion, that she just wants a buddy. He wracks his brain trying to remember if she's seeing anybody. But come on! She _must_ be..?

And in the cab ride to her place, where they laugh too loudly and swear too frequently and the cab driver keeps shooting them hostile looks, he doesn't feel like he's "getting lucky".

He feels like he's won the freakin' jackpot.

And they get back to her place and they're still laughing and wiping the tears from their eyes. He has no idea why everything seems so hysterically funny, and when she takes his coat, he doesn't resist when she pulls it off him, like she's eager, like she's hot for him.

And when she kisses him, it's impulsive - like a surprise.

Like a really, really great surprise.

He doesn't have time to react. She pulls away, grinning, leaving him breathless. Her lips feel so different against his, so wrong and yet so _right_. Shannon never kissed him like that. Shannon did everything so _reluctantly_, like she was bestowing an honour on him. He always felt like it was a fight to get her to give him anything.

He wonders if Tyler is even his at all.

Way to go to ruin the mood, he thinks, suddenly feel a little too sober to be doing this.

Then he leans against the stereo system and the music switches on suddenly, filling the apartment with a hot and heavy disco beat. Robin begins to dance, moving her hips then shimmy-ing her shoulders, almost tripping over the coffee table as she tries to get rid of her heels. He grins, catching her arm, and this time it's him who kisses her.

Their lips connect, and she surprises him again by how quickly she parts hers, sliding her tongue between his teeth. She grabs the lapels of his suit jacket, then lets them go in order to take hold of his tie. His palm is pressed against her cheek and he kisses her desperately, trying to keep up, his heart racing because this is new, _new_ and he wants to savour every single second.

He slows it down. He pushes her gently against the wall and he pins her there, taking his time to taste her - cherry lipstick and champagne, sweetness and grape and bubbles and _fun_ and everything Shannon isn't (wasn't). Robin's body is soft, pressed against him, the swell of her breast against his chest, her hips jammed tightly against the wall so that every time she moves, undulates, lets out a sigh, a tiny tremor of lust spikes through him.

He's hard before her fingers sweep over his ass, squeezing it.

Then her cellphone rings.

He doesn't want to pull back, doesn't want to lose this, lose _her_, but the second he feels her tense and push at his shoulder, he reluctantly lets her go.

He moves back a few paces, heads to the kitchen while she takes the call.

"No… No, I said don't call me, Derek. You know why!" She's saying. She sounds angry and determined, kind of like the way she kisses. Who's Derek?

"It's been two weeks, Jesus. Just stop this!" She hisses. And finally he gets it. She's a rebound girl. She's looking for something (someone) to ease the pain and he's just… convenient.

And it hurts him, stupidly, even after all the times he's been hurt. And he doesn't want to be the middleman here. He doesn't want to be making love with her, only for her to be thinking of Derek.

He'd grab his coat right now if she wasn't leaning against it.

So he browses her bookshelves, not really looking, not really seeing. there's a pile of photographs, from that party at MacLaren's a few months ago - the last party that he and Shannon had attended as a (real) married couple. The last one before…

He leafs through the photographs with a masochistic urge. He still doesn't know who "he" is - the one Shannon's been sleeping with. He almost doesn't want to know. He pities the poor sap. He knows Shannon - her silky words and her promises of love everylasting, of forever… of the rest of their lives.

There are pictures of the both of them, frozen in time, smiling and innocent. Innocent… at least _he_ was. Perhaps Shannon _never_ was. She's always out for what she can get… another man, a more successful man… a new thrill.

And then he sees it.

The photograph drops from his hand and floating in slow motion so it almost seems as though he can catch it. But he doesn't want to catch it. Doesn't want to look again at that incriminating picture - of his wife, his _wife_… and that guy, Marshall's friend, the architect, Ted Mosby.

The man who was banging her.

Barney can tell. He can just _tell_. The body language, the way Shannon isn't looking at the other man in the photograph, but she's touching him. She's touching him.

God, how he misses her touch.

Every time he feels weak, every time he wonders if he's made a huge mistake divorcing her, hell, every time he thinks he should have stayed in a loveless marriage just for the sake of his kid…

He needs to think about that photograph.

He bends to retrieve it but Robin gets there first.

*--*--*

He deflects, stepping away from her, because he's shaken up and confused and his lips are still numb from kissing her.

"Bad break up?" He asks her. Direct. Shannon always complains (complained) that he's too direct.

She shrugs, looking at the photograph. "He's, like, a millionaire. He'll get over it." She doesn't look very upset. Maybe he underestimated her. Why does he keep doing that?

"That's my wife," he explains. "In the photograph."

Robin's lips thin. "And Ted Mosby. They had an affair?"

His guts turn to ice. "Yes," he whispers.

She looks up at him, blue eyes, wide and direct. She's direct too. "You wanna stay the night?"

It's casual, but it's an invitation. It's not a code or a special language and it's not open to interpretation.

The correct answer is "yes". The correct answer is "screw everyone, screw the world… I want to screw you." Because he does. He really does. He really wants to have sex with her, with Robin.

But he opens his mouth and says. "No, I don't think so."

Somehow, incredibly, she doesn't listen to the words but she hears the intention behind them.

And she wraps her arms around his neck and her lips devour his.


	3. Ends

It felt too good to see her hurt.

Barney could blame his childhood, blame his soul-crushing marriage to Shannon, blame Shannon's infidelity with that bastard Ted Mosby but in the end he just didn't want to make excuses.

It just felt too damn good to cause her pain.

There was anger in Robin's eyes as she demanded to know why he hadn't called her, why he'd stopped taking her messages after two days of the most mind-blowing, intense, ridiculously energetic and fundamentally depraved sex of his life. Hell, Robin had taught him more about lovemaking in two days than he'd discovered with Shannon in ten years.

And maybe that was the point. On the third day, after leaving her with a battery of kisses and smiles and promises he knew he wouldn't keep, Barney Stinson felt free. For the first time in his entire life, he felt completely and utterly free.

The first thing he'd done was talk to a corporate head hunter friends of his, a guy he'd known from college who'd been trying to get him to move jobs, take a promotion, for years.

The second thing he'd done was go to a strip club and spend two thousand dollars getting dry humped by semi-nude dancing girls.

The third thing he'd done was take a new job at three times his current salary, intending to leave the damn NRDC in his dust.

The final confrontation with Robin had happened in a bar - MacLaren's to be precise. Apparently Robin had asked Marshall where Barney was likely to be. Marshall wasn't particularly inclined to sheild his friend, who's departure from the NRDC felt like a betrayal.

"I'm not a slut!" Robin hissed. "I don't just hook up with a guy. I don't do one night stands! I don't even do two-night stands! And I don't get treated like this. Not by any guy! Not by some jerk in a suit!"

Barney gazed at her, long and steady, until her vitriolic gush of words sputtered to halt. Only then did he see what he wanted to see.

He'd hurt her. And damn it felt good. Damn it felt good to inflict pain for a change, not take it. Damn it felt awesome to see the tears in her eyes.

"Baby," he drawled, holding his hands casually out in front of him. "I know I'm good. And I get it, I do. You've had a taste of Barney Stinson and you want another lick. Well be my guest, honey!" He waggled his eyebrows, pointing at his groin.

Robin's lip curled into a sneer. "You pig!" She whispered. And she didn't make a scene, she just turned around and walked away.

He felt deflated somehow. He wanted her to rave at him some more, he wanted her to slap him, he wanted her tears and her incoherent babbling. But Robin Scherbatsky was way too smart for that.

He couldn't help but wonder, if they had met under some other circumstances, where this need in him wasn't so great, where her defenses were a little harder, if maybe they could have made this work.

But right then he had the scent of blood in his nostrils and he wanted more. Leaving a horrified Marshall and Lily at their regular booth, he sauntered up to the bar and insinuated himself next to a busty blond girl who was sitting there all alone. "Hey baby… " He said smoothly. "Can I buy you a drink?"

Thing was, he'd been an (un)happily married man for ten years. He'd had ten years practice at being a nice guy. He had that damn act down to a T. What Robin had just taught him was that you didn't have to be a nice guy to get the girl into bed. You just had to look like one.

The girl at the bar turned around and he could see himself reflected in her eyes: Well dressed, gently spoken, sweet smile, still boyishly handsome despite one failed marriage and a kid. She smiled delightedly and nodded. Of course she did. They all would.

Maybe it would begin slightly differently every time, with every bimbo who crossed his path, but it would always have the same end.

Because it just felt too good to hurt them.


End file.
